In court filings, the Justice Department said it would no longer use the term “enemy combatant” to justify holding prisoners at Guantanamo Bay.

Obama still asserts the military’s authority to hold prisoners at Guantanamo Bay. But he says that authority comes from Congress and the international laws of war, not from the president’s own wartime power.

It sounds like President Obama is giving up on the “overseas contingency operation” against whoever and those captured guys, well, who knows what to call them?

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From AFP

President Barack Obama’s administration denied Wednesday dropping the punchy but controversial phrase “global war on terror” for the less snappy formulation “overseas contingency operation.”

There is no administration-wide edict from the White House Office of Management and Budget mandating the name change, as claimed in a Washington Post report, officials said.

“I sometimes am amused by things that I read in the press. I am not aware of any communication that I’ve had on that topic,” OMB director Peter Orszag told reporters.

According to the newspaper, the OMB had directed the Pentagon to drop the name coined by president George W. Bush for his battle against extremism after the September 11 attacks of 2001.

For critics, the phrase “global war on terror” was emblematic of an approach that was dangerously broad-brushed and which risked alienating the Islamic world.

Its formal omission would be consistent with the Obama administration’s reversal of key Bush policies, including ending the war in Iraq and shutting down the Guantanamo Bay prison camp.

Ron Silver, who died this last weekend, delivered that great line not in a movie, on TV or as an actor: he spoke those words about the 9-11 attack by al-Qaeda upon the people of the United States as an American. And he spoke those words despite the fact that he knew Hollywood would reject him.

And Hollywood did reject him.

“It’s affected me very badly. I can’t point to a person or a job I’ve lost, but this community is not very pluralistic,” Silver told the AP in 2005. “I haven’t worked for 10 months.”

The land of the free and the home of the brave still has trouble in some places, at some times and among some people; in accepting alternate views.

Barack Obama is the anti-Ron Silver. Obama is about reaching out and discussing with the taliban and al-Qaeda, closing the terror prison at Gitmo, and going soft on terrorists. He has even done away with the words “terrorists” and “enemy combatants.”

**************KABUL, Afghanistan (CNN) — A top Taliban commander has issued a new threat to foreign aid workers, saying that under the insurgent group’s new “constitution” they will execute them as spies or hold them in exchange for the release of Taliban fighters.
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In an exclusive telephone interview Friday night with CNN, Mohammed Ibrahim Hanafi said the Taliban intelligence wing was actively gathering information on foreign aid workers. “If we get someone, that is how we will deal with it under our new constitution,” he said.

He added that he was telling “Afghan brothers not to work with NGOs.”

In the 15-minute interview, arranged by an intermediary for CNN, Hanafi repeated the Taliban’s pledge to keep girls out of public schools.

“Our law is still the same old law which was in place during our rule in Afghanistan,” he said. “Mullah Mohammad Omar was our leader and he is still our head and leader and so we will follow the same law as before.”

Good for Politico and CNN for going after and getting this interview and story…..

John Harris of Politico said today on Fox News, “Even people of his own party are wondering how we can advance the Obama agenda.”

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Vice President Cheney charged Sunday morning on CNN that President Obama is using the recession “to try to justify” what is probably the largest expansion of federal authority “in the history of the Republic.”

By Mike Allen
Politico

“I worry a lot that that they’re using the current set of economic difficulties to try to justify a massive expansion in the government, and much more authority for the government over the private sector,” Cheney said in his first television interview since leaving office. “I don’t think that’s good. I don’t think that’s going to solve the problem.”

Speaking to host John King on “State of the Union,” Cheney said he think the programs Obama has proposed “in health care, in energy and so forth constitute probably the biggest – or one of the biggest – expansions of federal authority over the private economy in the history of the Republic.”

“I worry very much that what is being done here is saying, ‘We’ve got an economic crisis, there’s we’re fundamentally the health program in America,’” Cheney said. “I don’t think that’s right.”

Cheney has been largely out of sight for the past two months, as he and his wife, Lynne, set up their new home in Northern Virginia. But as he was in a recent interview with POLITICO, Cheney is still free with his opinions and much more aggressive in defending the administration’s legacy than President Bush has been so far.

Cheney pushed back against effort by Democrats to blame President Bush for the current economic valley, saying the Bush administration is not responsible “for the creation of those circumstances.”

“I think there’s no question but what the economic circumstances that he inherited are difficult ones,” Cheney said. We said that before we left. I don’t think you can blame the Bush administration for the creation of those circumstances. It’s a global financial problem.

In court filings Friday, the Justice Department said it will no longer use the term “enemy combatant” to justify holding prisoners at Guantanamo Bay.

Obama still asserts the military’s authority to hold prisoners at Guantanamo Bay. But he says that authority comes from Congress and the international laws of war, not from the president’s own wartime power.

It sounds like President Obama is giving up on the war against whoever and those captured guys, well, who knows?

President Barack Obama is defending everything: the economy, earmarks, his health care plan, environmental plan, energy plan, education reform, government spending, bigger government, the rights to free and open seas (re: China), a stronger U.N., an encircled North Korea, the Muslim world, the power of negotiations (with Syria, Iran, and others), the ramp up of troops in Afghanistan, etc.

You get the idea.

In many ways I see this president as going the right things. But then again he is doing everything.

He is pro-immigration and today he said he’d send troops to our border with Mexico, maybe.

But then again: doesn’t everything depend upon the economy; followed closely by national security and stoppong terrorists?

But terrorists and terrorism are gone from our public discussion….deleted from the Obama lexicon.

Hmmm.

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From Rasmussen Reports
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Forty-one percent (41%) of U.S. voters worry that America’s preoccupation with the ongoing economic crisis will make us more vulnerable to a terrorist attack, according to a new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey.

But 43% disagree and say it’s not a concern while 16% are not sure.

Forty percent (40%) also say America has more enemies than friends among the nations of the world, although 44% say we have more friends.

Voters are closely divided, too, over whether the current worldwide economic crisis is more likely to create tension between the United States and other nations or more likely to foster cooperation. Forty-four percent (44%) see more tension to come, while 43% expect greater cooperation between America and other countries.

Confidence in how America is doing in the War on Terror dropped dramatically in late February, but it is not yet clear whether the numbers are a statistical blip or a reflection of recent news developments.

Iran continues to be the country the plurality of voters (35%) expect to be the first to seriously test the Obama Administration. Nineteen percent (19%) say North Korea will be the new president’s first major threat, while 12% predict China. Eight percent (8%) say Russia will be the first serious challenger, but one-out-of-four voters (25%) are not sure which country is the greater threat.

Hundreds of black-suited Pakistani lawyers and flag-waving opposition activists launched a cross-country protest on Thursday, as the year-old civilian coalition government scrambled for ways to avert a showdown.

The movement for an independent judiciary could destabilize President Asif Ali Zardari’s government at a time when the nuclear-armed U.S. ally faces severe problems from Islamist militants and a sinking economy.

Police detained hundreds of political activists on Wednesday, and banned rallies. But Interior Ministry chief Rehman Malik said on Thursday the so-called long march that set out from the cities of Karachi and Quetta would be allowed to go ahead.

“We’ll not stop them, but if someone tries to take the law in his hand I must say in the house that he won’t be allowed,” Malik told the National Assembly.

“This is a war for power and rule and unless we get out of this sphere, such things will keep on happening.”

Opposition leader and former prime ministerNawaz Sharif has thrown his weight behind the lawyers, putting him into open confrontation with Zardari.

Infuriated by a Supreme Court ruling barring him and his brother from elected office, and by Zardari ejecting his party from power in Punjab province and imposing central rule, Sharif has called the protest a defining moment for Pakistan.

Pakistani lawyers and members of civil rights movement march along a street as they take part in a demonstration in Lahore, Pakistan, Thursday, March 12, 2009. Protesters vowed Thursday to press ahead with a major march onto Pakistan’s parliament in defiance of bans and hundreds of arrests by a government that has come increasingly under fire from its critics. (AP Photo/K.M. Chaudary)

Stoking tension in a country with a grim record of assassinations, a spokesman for Sharif said the government had “hatched a plot” to kill him.

Zardari’s spokesman dismissed that as “political gimmickry” and said the Sharif bothers had been promised full security.

Pakistan is vital to U.S. efforts to stabilize neighboring Afghanistan and defeat al Qaeda. The United States wants Pakistan to focus on fighting militancy rather than on political power plays.

The Taleban commander responsible for increasingly sophisticated explosives attacks on British soldiers in Afghanistan is a former detainee from Guantanamo Bay, British officials and Taleban sources have told The Times.

Abdul Ghulam Rasoul was held in Guantanamo for six years before his release, in December 2007, by the unanimous decision of a review board that determined he was no longer a threat.

Catherine Philp, Michael Evans and Tom
The Times (UK)

British officials told The Times that Rasoul is the man that has since resurfaced as Mullah Abdullah Zakir, the Taleban’s new operations chief in southern Afghanistan and the architect of a new offensive against British and American troops.

The revelation of Rasoul’s return to the battlefield underscores the challenges faced by the Obama administration in carrying out its vow to close Guantanamo, and raises fresh questions about the quality of American intelligence used there.Pentagon records of Rasoul’s time in Guantanamo show he told investigators he had never been a commander in the Taleban, one of the factors that recommended him for release.

President Obama has said (A) He wants to close the terrorist prison at Guantanomo Bay Cuba; and (B) He wants to open discussions with the Taliban; and (C) We need to send more troops to Afghanistan.

The president is in the process of sending more U.S. troops to Afghanistan and is begging European allies to do the same — even while Joe Biden is saying we are losing the war in Afghanistan.

Bad policy doesn’t help one achieve national goals…..

Well: Here’s a way the president can talk to the Taliban: talk to them at Gitmo before they get free and go to work against the U.S. again…. Then you don’t have to send U.S. troops overseas to kill them.

A former U.S. Marine Corps General Officer told us today, “The only good Taliban is a dead Taliban.” But if that can’t be achieved, maybe Gitmo is as good as it gets….

Our foreign policy on Gitmo, the Taliban, Afghanistan and (we can no longer say TERRORISM) is about as stupid as government gets….

The Taliban‘s new top operations officer in southern Afghanistan had been a prisoner at the Guantanamo Bay detention center, the latest example of a freed detainee who took a militant leadership role and a potential complication for the Obama administration’s efforts to close the prison. U.S. authorities handed over the detainee to the Afghan government, which in turn released him, according to Pentagon and CIA officials.

Abdullah Ghulam Rasoul, formerly Guantanamo prisoner No. 008, was among 13 Afghan prisoners released to the Afghan government in December 2007. Rasoul is now known as Mullah Abdullah Zakir, a nom de guerre that Pentagon and intelligence officials say is used by a Taliban leader who is in charge of operations against U.S. and Afghan forces in southern Afghanistan.

The officials, who spoke anonymously because they are not authorized to release the information, said Rasoul has joined a growing faction of former Guantanamo prisoners who have rejoined militant groups and taken action against U.S. interests. Pentagon officials have said that as many as 60 former detainees have resurfaced on foreign battlefields.

Pentagon and intelligence officials said Rasoul has emerged as a key militant figure in southern Afghanistan, where violence has been spiking in the last year. Thousands of U.S. troops are preparing to deploy there to fight resurgent Taliban forces.

One intelligence official told the Associated Press that Rasoul’s stated mission is to counter the U.S. troop surge.

Although the militant detainees who have resurfaced were released under the Bush administration, the revelation underscores the Obama administration’s dilemma in moving to close the detention camp at Guantanamo and figuring out what to do with the nearly 250 prisoners who remain there.

In one of his first acts in office, President Barack Obama signed an executive order to close the jail next year. The order also convened a task force that will determine how to handle remaining detainees, who could be transferred to other U.S. detention facilities for trial, transferred to foreign nations for legal proceedings or freed.

More than 800 prisoners have been imprisoned at Guantanamo; only a handful have been charged. About 520 Guantanamo detainees have been released from custody or transferred to prisons elsewhere in the world.

A Pentagon tally of the detainees released show that 122 were transferred from Guantanamo in 2007, more than any other year.